USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Los Angeles county, Volume II > Part 58
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The early education of Otis W. Lewis was acquired in his native city and included the curriculum of the high school. Thereafter he took a course in a business college at Ypsilanti, Michigan, and he then, at the age of sixteen years, took a position as bellboy in the Phelps Medical & Surgical Sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan. On the 6th of November, 1905, Mr. Lewis arrived in Los Angeles, California, his financial resources having been so limited that after paying the expenses of his journey to this state he had but five cents in his pocket when he alighted from the train at Los Angeles, in the midst of a pouring rain. He forthwith invested his five cents in a hamburger sandwich, and, wet and penniless, he took refuge beneath a store awning. A friendly police officer here accosted him and gave him information and directions by means of which he secured that same night a position as elevator operator. The next morning he received an advance of one dollar to pay for food, and after serving six weeks in the capacity noted he obtained a position as clerk in the cigar store of George W. Walker. Five months later he took charge of villas for Abbott Kinney at Venice, and thereafter he took charge of the cigar department of a grocery store at Ocean Park. While he was thus engaged all but four of the clerks in the establishment were discharged, as the result of investi- gations made by detectives employed by the owner. Mr. Lewis was one of the four whose unblemished records led to their retention, and the result was that he soon gained a far better position, in a leading department store at Bakersfield, where he was made chief solicitor. He made a splendid record in this position and greatly increased the volume of business con- trolled by the establishment. Upon resigning this post he engaged in the confectionery business at Bakersfield, but impaired health finally com- pelled him to retire. He sold the business and again found his financial resources at very low ebb. In order to recuperate his health by outdoor work he drove laundry and bakery wagons, and finally, in July, 1919, he entered into partnership with his brother-in-law, Frank A. Greth, and selected Alhambra as a promising stage for the establishment of a motion- picture theater. For the use of the firm W. E. Cooper erected a building at 120 West Main Street, and here is now found the most modern and well ordered suburban theater of the kind in Los Angeles County. The appoint- ments and general equipment are of the most elaborate order, including a pipe organ, installed at a cost of $15,000.00. Mr. Lewis has shown marked discrimination and good judgment in contracting for the best of films. especially those of artistic and educational value, and he has a franchise, extending to 1945, for the use here of the films of the Associated First National, Inc., the world's largest distributing agency in this line of enter- prise. Here are presented also the best films of the Goldwyn studios and the United Artists. The substantial success which has attended this venture has fully justified the faith and judgment of Mr. Lewis, and he has reason to take pride in the results of the venture, which has placed him among the representative young business men of Alhambra. This theater, known as the Alhambra, has a seating capacity of 650, gives two evening shows daily and matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Mr. Lewis is a popular member of Alhambra Lodge, B. P. O. E.
At Ocean Park, in 1906. Mr. Lewis wedded Miss Harriet Baker, who was born at St. Louis, Missouri, and who is a talented musician, especially as a pianist. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis have one child, Dorothy Gertrude, born August 17, 1909.
X. H. HOLLAR, discoverer and developer of one of the largest bodies of natural saline deposits in Southern California and in the world, has lived in California for many years, is a business man of long and successful experience. has devoted much of his lifetime to the study of mining, min- eralogy and related subjects, and is regarded as an authority on the scientific as well as the practical side of mine operation.
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Mr. Hollar has had an interesting career and an unusual scope of achieve- ments for a man of his age. He was born at Newark, Ohio, January 16, 1881, son of David and Susan (Forry) Hollar. His parents were natives of Pennsylvania and were farmers. Of their eight children X. H. Hollar is the oldest.
Mr. Hollar's father was an invalid and died when the oldest child was seventeen years of age. The son for this reason had left school when about thirteen years of age. The family home was about three miles from Newark. Owing to bad roads and other conditions the children had no regular access to school facilities. After his father became incapacitated the son, though only thirteen, took a man's place, farming and superintend- ing 160 acres, operating a dairy, delivering milk from door to door in Newark, doing all this work with the assistance only of his mother and the younger children. The farm had a mortgage of $15,000, and by several years of hard work the family reduced it one-half. Then, during the hard times following the panic of 1893, the family had to sell the property in 1897, receiving only $150 more than the mortgage of $7500. Mr. Hollar then moved to Hardin County, Ohio, and started all over again, renting lands and taking up the production of special crops of onions and corn. By the fall of 1899 he had developed his productive facilities until they included seventy-five acres of onions, four hundred acres of potatoes, five hundred acres of corn. It was a year of almost unprecedented low prices, and his potatoes brought only nineteen cents a bushel, corn, twenty-three cents and onions, thirty-five cents. Having practically lost the labor of two or three years, Mr. Hollar then built and operated a grain elevator, and in 1901 he organized a Co-Operative Building & Loan Company, which proved extremely successful until the old-line companies secured legislation that forced the co-operatives out of business.
Having proved his constructive enterprise in the East, though with little financial success, Mr. Hollar in 1905 came West and located at Los Angeles. He owned 160 acres at Corona, and began its development for oranges and lemons. He also had a sixty acre walnut grove at La Mirada in Los Angeles County. Later these orchards were sold, and since then Mr. Hollar has been primarily interested in mining operations. The study of minerals and of practical mining operations has been a subject very fascinating to him. He was interested in and operated several mines in Kern and Inyo counties, including the King Solomon Mines of Kern. When the World war broke out his crew of Italians were drafted into the service and returned to their native country, and this property was shut down until more favorable conditions returned. About the time America entered the war Mr. Hollar directed his attention toward the raw materials that were essential to war needs. While searching for potash and saline deposits he discovered the wonderful purity and abundance of the saline deposits located in an extinct crater at what is known as Bristol Dry Lake in San Bernardino County, on the main line of the Santa Fe at Amboy.
Following his discovery Mr. Hollar undertook an energetic campaign to assemble active men and capital to improve and market the products, all of unusual quality and purity, in fact, of a quality not duplicated elsewhere in America. There are many deposits of salt in the United States, but in many cases these salt beds contain other elements so that without elaborate refining the products are unfit for human use. The salt beds discovered by Mr. Hollar are in this respect perhaps the most remarkable anywhere. They consist of approximately 15,000 acres of solid rock salt, in two layers, the first being five and one-half feet thick and lying under from three to ten feet of volcanic ash, while the second is eight and one-half feet and is overburdened with six feet of volcanic ash. Every other merchantable bed of rock salt in the United States lies from 600 to 4000 feet underground.
It is also estimated that there is in solution ninety million tons of calcium chloride in this deposit. The brine percolates into pits, is pumped into vats. and by solar concentration is prepared for market and sells at from $30 to $50 a ton. This calcium chloride is valuable to citrus growers, being used
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in a crude form. It is a conserver of moisture and also effects a chemical release of other valuable elements in the soil, increasing the fertility as well as conserving moisture.
Mr. Hollar was the prime mover in perfecting the organization known as "A. A. One Rock Salt & Chemicals Company," organized December 28, 1921, with a capital of $750,000. The president of the company is C. D. Crites, formerly manager and director of the First National Bank of Lima, Ohio, now a resident of Los Angeles. For a number of years Mr. Crites was United States bank examiner, and became author of some of the fea- tures of state and federal banking laws. The vice-president and general manager of the company is Mr. Hollar. The treasurer is W. D. Howard, president of the Continental National Bank of Los Angeles. The secretary is George Henderson, who for thirty years before coming to California was cashier and adjuster for the Farmers Insurance Company of Cedar Rapids, lowa, a business founded by his father. The directors of the company consist of Charles S. Chapman, of Fullerton, California, one of the largest Valencia orange growers in California; C. D. Crites, X. H. Hollar, George Henderson, J. P. Kennedy, Colonel S. A. Court, a corpora- tion attorney and former business associate of President Harding.
Since this organization the company has been constructing a plant in units, each unit being developed as the demand for the product grows. Prior to the World war many of the by-products of salt were imported to the United States from England and Germany. There is a large demand for these products in Australia and the Orient, and California is from three thousand to nine thousand miles nearer to those countries than England and Germany, the former source of supply. The offices of the company are in the Pacific Mutual Building at Los Angeles, while the plant is at Bristol Dry Lake at Amboy. The main distribution point is in Los Angeles, while branch houses are to be established at San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.
Mr. Hollar is a member of Ada Lodge, F. and A. M., and Ada Chapter at Ada, Ohio, and the Council and Commandery at Kenton, Ohio. He was the owner for a number of years of the yacht San Diego, which after its sale by him had a checkered career in several episodes along the Pacific Coast. It was while he was owner of this yacht that he forced the free landing of yachts at Catalina Islands. At that time the owners of the island were taxing yacht owners for making landings, and the County ot Los Angeles was paying for the building of roads there.
EDWARD T. PIERCE, whose death occurred at Sierra Madre, January 29, 1919, was a man of noble character and high intellectual attainments. He played a large and beneficent part in connection with advancing educational work in California, and a tribute to his memory consistently finds place in this publication.
Mr. Pierce was born at Meredith, Delaware County, New York, on the 19th of March, 1851, the eldest in a family of ten sons and one daughter born to Mr. and Mrs. James Washington Pierce. His father was born in Dutchess County, New York, and later became a substantial farmer in Dela- ware County, that state. He and his wife in their declining years came to California.
Edward T. Pierce graduated from the Franklin Institute in the County of Delaware, New York, from the New York State Normal School in the City of Albany, and from the Law School of Union University, one of the strong educational institutions of the old Empire State. With effective post-graduate work he later received the degree of Doctor of Pedagogy. He never engaged in the practice of law, but immediately after his gradua- tion from the law school in 1872 he adopted teaching as his life work. He taught in the public schools of Linden and Belleville, New Jersey, and in 1881 he came to California and became the teacher of the first district school at Sierra Madre, this having then been known as the Baldwin Ranch School. In 1883 he was elected to the superintendency of the Pasadena schools. Mr. Pierce was here at the time of the period of rapid develop-
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ment and growth at Pasadena, and he was most influential in advancing the educational system of that rapidly growing community. Within the period of his administration as superintendent were erected five of the large school buildings of Pasadena. He continued his service as superintendent of schools until the spring of 1893, when he resigned, upon his election to the presidency of the California State Normal School in the City of Chico, Butte County, California. After four years in this school he was elected president of the State Normal School at Los Angeles. He continued as the able and popular executive head of this institution until 1904, when his impaired health compelled his retirement. Thereafter he and his wife made an extended tour abroad, two years having been given to travel in European and other foreign lands. This gracious diversion inured greatly to the restoring of the physical health of Mr. Pierce, and after his return to his home at Sierra Madre he again became influential in educational service. He was elected president of the local Board of Education, and in this con- nection he was able to effect many improvements in the school system, including the establishing of kindergarten and domestic-science departments. He continued as a valued and honored member of the Board of Education until his death.
At the time when Mr. Pierce initiated his administration as superin- tendent of the schools of Pasadena, the city owned five acres of land at the corner of Fair Oaks and Colorado streets, and it was on this site that the public school was established. Later this tract was plated and sold in city lots, and with the funds thus realized was erected the present Wilson School Building on Marengo Avenue. The original tract of five acres was donated to the city by the honored pioneer, D. B. Wilson, in whose memory the present Wilson School was named.
In 1881 Mr. Pierce purchased twenty acres of land at Sierra Madre, his being one of the first purchases on the N. C. Carter subdivision and the land being unimproved at that time. His land, at the corner of the present Sierra Madre Avenue, extended from Central Avenue to Grand View Avenue. His was the third house to be erected in this colony. He cleared his land and planted the same to citrus fruit trees. The only mail service in that pioneer period was supplied by the neighbors forming a club and employing a man named Richardson to make daily trips to the San Gabriel post office, and the local distribution of the mail at Sierra Madre was made at the Pierce home, under the direction of Mrs. Pierce. Incidentally this gracious chatelaine of the pioneer home extended hospitality most gen- erously in the rapidly growing community, and it was at one of the pleasing community gatherings at her home that action was taken for the securing of a post office here. When favorable action was taken on the application and the post office of Sierra Madre was established Mr. Pierce was appointed the first postmaster, his salary being $150 a year. His diplomacy and consideration was shown in connection with naming the new post office and town, he having suggested that it be named after the mountains at whose foot it is situated. Mr. Pierce was a well fortified advocate of the prin- ciples of the republican party, and was a member of the Baptist Church, in which church his father served forty years as a deacon. In the York Rite of the Masonic fraternity the affiliation of Mr. Pierce was with Coeur de Leon Commandery No. 9, Knights Templar, Los Angeles, his basic mem- bership having been in Blue Lodge No. 218, also of Los Angeles. He was a member of Al Malaikah Temple of the Mystic Shrine. For all time shall California owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Pierce for the constructive service he gave in the upbuilding of the educational system of the state.
In the year 1877 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Pierce and Miss Isabel Woodin, of Pawling, Dutchess County, New York, in which county likewise were born her parents, Daniel P. and Mary Jane (Klumpp) Woodin, the father having been a farmer by vocation. Mrs. Pierce attended the New York State Normal College in the City of Albany, and she gave thirty-one years of earnest and successful service in the pedagogic profes- sion. In earlier years she was a popular teacher at Pawling and at Tucka-
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hoe, New York; Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Belleville, New Jersey, where she was associated with Mr. Pierce in educational work. She con- tinued a valued coadjutor of her husband in his educational service in California, where she taught in the public schools of Pasadena, and also in the state normal schools at Chico and Los Angeles. A woman of culture and high ideals, she has taken lively interest in civic affairs. She served as president of the Woman's Club of Sierra Madre, was for ten years secre- tary of the Library Board of that place, and after the death of her husband she was requested to take his place as a member of the Board of Education, a position in which she continued until her resignation in 1891, at the time of her removal to her present beautiful home in the City of Pasadena. Of the three children of Mr. and Mrs. Pierce two died in infancy. Vora, who was born at Belleville, New Jersey, received the best of educational advan- tages, and in 1902 she became the wife of William K. Maull, a native of Lincoln, Illinois. The one child of this union is Catherine Isabelle, who is now the wife of Lawrence L. Oldfield, of San Bernardino, her mother being a resident of Pasadena.
ALFRED P. MOREWOOD, who is successfully established in the practice of his profession at Redondo Beach and who has gained secure status as one of the able and representative members of the bar of Los Angeles County, was born in the historic and beautiful old city of Elizabeth, Union County, New Jersey, on the 6th of April, 1885. In his native city and in New York City he received the advantages of both public and private schools, and in 1909 he graduated from the New York Law School. After thus receiving his degree of Bachelor of Laws he continued to be engaged in the work of his profession in New York City until December, 1920, when he came to California and opened an office at Redondo Beach. Here he has developed a substantial general practice, which is constantly expanding in scope and importance. Mr. Morewood has identified himself fully and loyally with local interests, and is an active member of the Chamber of Commerce at Redondo Beach.
At the time of the war Mr. Morewood was a member of Squadron A. Cavalry, New York State, and from that enlisted in the Motor Transport Corps. The armistice was signed at the time they were about ready to go overseas. Mr. Morewood also went through the 1918 course of the Platts- burg Military Training Camp, and was in the same regiment as Col. Charles Whittlesey.
HENRY BACHMAN STEHMAN, M. D. The experience of mankind has proved that the fullest measure of life is derived from devotion to objective interests, particularly those involving service to fellow men. A more beau- tiful example of such a life could hardly be found than that of the late Dr. Henry Bachman Stehman, whose home for twenty years was in Pasadena. Members of the medical profession and a large number of people outside appreciate in a measure what Doctor Stehman stood for in ideals and what he accomplished in service. It is well for humanity that none of the influ- ences from such a character as his should be lost. It was perhaps with due consciousness of this fact that Doctor Norman Bridge, the distinguished physician of Los Angeles and Chicago, in his book entitled "Mental Thera- peutics," published in 1922, took the opportunity to review the life of this honored and beloved physician and pay distinctive tribute in a way that will serve for all time as a definite memorial of some of the great ideals and the achievements of Doctor Stehman. It is the sketch written by Doctor Bridge, with only a few appropriate additions, that has been selected as the appropriate record of his life for this history of the County of Los Angeles.
On February 17, 1918, there died in Pasadena, California, a modest, gentle, great man, whose career as a citizen, physician and philanthropist was unique.
He was born February 9, 1852, son of John B. and Anna Stehman. He graduated from Lebanon Valley College in 1873, receiving there the A. M.
a. P. ITZonwood.
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degree. He was a student at the Universities of Leipzig and Brussels from 1873 to 1875 ; and he received the degree in medicine from Jefferson Medical College in 1877. After this he served an interneship in Blockley Hospital.
In 1881 he married Miss Elizabeth Miller, a native of Adamstown, Pennsylvania, and daughter of Henry and Eliza Miller. The four children born to their marriage were Elizabeth, John, Genevieve and Henry. Henry died in 1917, while a student of medicine. John was in service in San Francisco during the war, and is now in business at Los Angeles.
Doctor Stehman became superintendent of the Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago in 1884, and so continued until 1899, when his health broke down and he resigned and moved to Pasadena. He never completely recov- ered ; but he got better and before long began some professional work which he continued under the handicap of physical suffering until shortly before his death-and he died the most useful citizen of the town.
He was never content to be simply and merely a practicing physician. but his avocations in philanthropy, public benefit and religion engaged his heart and mind constantly. He was a man of broad and sane vision, and the work he undertook he usually accomplished. He had a constructive mind and a genius for organization which had scope in two hospitals-one in Chicago and one in Pasadena-the building of a great church in Pasadena (of whose finance committee he was chairman ) and finally in a monument to his zeal for service, La Vina (the Vineyard) a sanitarium for tuber- culosis, situated to the northwest of Pasadena.
As a hospital manager he was superb, and in procuring funds and endow- ments for hospitals he was something of a genius. The Presbyterian Hospital received through him many gifts-endowment of beds, wards and rooms and bequests of large amounts. He chiefly designed the interiors of several of the buildings of the Pasadena Hospital, and he assisted in secur- ing large gifts for this institution.
La Vina (Vinya) was his greatest work. On a farm near the moun- tains have arisen some eighteen buildings for the housing of one hundred patients. The farm and the buildings and all their belongings have been the willing gifts of those who believed in the man and his work. It was his ambition to create here a haven of rest and care for a few of the many consumptives who walk the streets as long as they can and walk in loneliness and desolation. And this he nobly did. After the death of Dr. Stehman the patients of the La Vina Sanitarium caused to be made and placed on the walls of the chapel a memorial consisting of a bronze tablet, with life sized portrait in relief entitled "The Beloved Physician."
For ten years in the midst of an exacting practice of medicine he gave himself to this service as a labor of love, refusing all material rewards of any kind, even declining gifts for his personal comfort and relief in his work.
While in Chicago he was for eleven years a successful teacher in Rush Medical College, finally as assistant professor of gynecology. He was an expert diagnostician and a resourceful surgeon. He had the fine art of helping the sick without irritating them.
He had a genius for raising money for a good cause and he did it without annoying people. He rarely asked for money directly; rather his friends and acquaintances enthused with him over what money could do for a good cause-and the money came without being asked for.
His religion he took more seriously and with less parade than any other man I ever knew. His relations with others were always kindly, unselfish and helpful. His purposes in life were too serious for him to waste time and energy over trifles; these he took with rather amused philosophy that saved him from the harm of irritation. The power of his unobtrusive per- sonality, like a rich perfume, touched the spirit of those about him for their strength and comfort. His life was consecrated to the weal of the sick and needy of all classes, of all religions and no religion. He respected the sincere opinion of others on any and all subjects ; he was never captious and disputatious ; he was beloved by all who knew him and of him, and in his
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